“Every
gun made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in
a final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those
who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms spends not
money alone. It spends the sweat of its laborers, the genius
of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Dwight
D. Eisenhower

Thirty
years after the Vietnam War, tens of thousands of American combat veterans
struggle still with the debilitating and crippling effects of posttraumatic
stress disorder. Soldier’s Heart explores
and analyzes the symptoms of PTSD, brings heightened awareness of the disorder,
illustrates its destructive impact on American society and provides hope to
those who suffer.

Living in the shadowy interior of the brain’s Limbic System and to the
untrained eye invisible, PTSD reaches beyond its stricken victims negatively
to influence family members and loved ones. Soldier’s Heart delves
deep into the lives of otherwise “normal” American veterans who
seemingly for no reason, display lifelong patterns of bad choices and erratic,
self-destructive behavior. Exploration and analysis of the life portraits
of the combat veterans in this book brings the myriad symptoms of PTSD to light
and equips lay readers to recognize the disorder and through understanding,
take positive steps to facilitate the healing process.

For years, families and friends have heard bits and pieces – snippets – of
war stories from the veterans in their lives. Grudgingly revealed,
generalized and non-specific, these anecdotes leave the veterans’ loved
ones yearning for more information, desperate to understand the events that
made the veteran who he is and if necessary for discovery, to know and feel the
horrors their husbands, daughters, sons, brothers or fathers experienced. More
than a mere re-telling of “war stories,” Soldier’s Heart examines
the entire life portraits of the featured veterans through extended first-person
testimony, a roadmap for readers to gain understanding of PTSD’s insidious
and often counterintuitive symptoms. By their nature poignant and profound
statements on the human condition, the narrative portraits in Soldier’s
Heart will provide emotional and intellectual comfort to countless of
Americans whose relatives and friends have served the country in time of war.